


so deep in my heart that you're really a part of me

by machinewithoutfeelings



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, F/M, Masturbation, One-Sided Attraction, Possessive Behavior, Sibling Incest, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-15 21:04:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10557698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/machinewithoutfeelings/pseuds/machinewithoutfeelings
Summary: Michele is eight years old when he first learns about soulmates. His teacher says that a soulmate is a very special person, made just for you.Michele already has one of those.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've always wanted to write a Soulmate AU, but I never really had an idea until now. Of course, it is this.

Michele is eight years old and at school the first time he really takes notice of soulmates.

His teacher is leaning over his desk, helping him with a math problem, and her loose sleeves are falling to her elbows. That is where he sees it, and Michele tilts his head to read the words blooming in blue ink on her forearm.

_Left work early- i’ll be waiting for you, my love!_

“Why are there words on your arm?”

Mrs. Bianchi looks at her arm. She smiles as she reads the words, then blushes as she looks back at Michele’s curious face. 

“It’s my husband,” she says. “When two people are soulmates, they can write messages on their skin and it will show on their soulmate’s skin. He writes me little notes sometimes.” She holds her arm tenderly, as if something precious. “Your soulmate is someone very dear, children; they are a special person made just for you. Whenever you find them, treat them with love and respect. You only have one- don’t waste that.” She then shakes her head, as if clearing a fog, and goes back to talking about math. Michele can’t concentrate now. He wants to know more about soulmates.

He knows of it, kind of. His mother and father are soulmates. He _knows_ he has heard it mentioned before, but it isn’t exactly the kind of thing his family believes is polite to talk about. They are very traditional. So he knows he can’t ask either of them.

A very special person made just for him. 

Michele already has one of those.

 

* * *

Sara isn’t in his class. The school said there was a policy about putting twins with the same teacher- tears had burned hot in Michele’s eyes when they said this, but he hid them. He had to be strong for Sara. 

They walk home together, his Sara holding tight to his arm when they cross the street. He thinks about bringing up the subject of soulmates, but something holds him back. What if Sara thought it was weird? Instead he walks next to her, trying to pay attention to her talking about ballet lessons with her friend. 

“You should come, Mickey!” she says. “Laura says there are boys in ballet class, too!”

Michele nods. Of course he’ll go, for Sara. 

He’s quiet at dinner, mostly in his own head. He’s working out a plan. If messages written on your soulmate’s skin were supposed to show up on your own, then he could just do a test. Make a little mark on Sara’s skin, and then it would show up on his. Then he would have proof that they _are_ soulmates before bringing it up, and she won’t be able to think it is weird. 

He can’t go to sleep that night after his mother tucks him in. Instead, he waits until he is sure Sara will be asleep, and then he sneaks out of his room with a skinny black marker clutched in his fist. His parents are on the balcony; Michele can see that they are standing close as they smoke cigarettes over the railing . His mother has a glass of wine in her hand, and his father has one hand on her waist. 

Sara’s room is at the end of the hall. She’s asleep, covers kicked down to the bottom of the bed and body sprawled out over the mattress. Her arm hangs off the side, which makes everything really easy. Michele sits down on the floor at the base of her bed, and delicately takes her wrist into his hand. He squeezes his eyes shut for a second, and thinks out a wish to the world. _I just want Sara to be my soulmate._

He uncaps the marker. 

He draws the smallest little heart on the inside of his wrist, right over the vein. Sara twitches a little at the contact, and Michele drops her wrist. She’s still asleep, though, just rolls over a bit and mumbles into her pillow. Michele has just leaned back onto the wooden bedframe, sighing in relief, when he feels the stinging on his wrist. It’s _painful_ , like the time he stepped barefoot on one of his dad’s cigarettes that he had tossed on the ground, still lit. It last for barely a second, though, and then Michele is yanking up the pale blue sleeve of his pajama shirt.

A tiny black heart, dotted across his vein. 

He knew it. _He knew it!_ Michele almost cries out in happiness, but he covers his mouth because Sara is asleep just right here. Excitedly, he takes the marker again and, on his own wrist, the one without Sara’s heart, he draws a little star. He hates the thought of causing Sara pain, even for a moment, but she is asleep and probably won’t even notice. Tomorrow he can tell her all about soulmates, because maybe her teacher doesn’t tell them about these things like Mrs. Bianchi, and he can tell her that she is his and he is hers. They are each others, and will always be. It is a comforting thought. Michele has never been without Sara, they were inside of their mother together before they even were anything, and he never wants to be without her.

Michele looks at Sara’s wrist.

There is no star. 

He looks back at his own wrist. Did he do it right? He traces over the star again with his marker, making it larger and a little more misshapen, but still no ink appears on Sara. 

It doesn’t make any sense! This is how it is supposed to work, isn’t it? Michele thinks maybe he misunderstood, he’s doing something wrong, but it still bothers him to not see the little star show up on his sister’s skin. He shakes her wrists, rubs at the spot, just willing it to come through. 

“Mickey?”

Sara is sitting up in bed, sleepy-eyed, staring down at Michele where he sits on the floor. He drops the marker and it rolls under her bed, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “What are you doing here, Mickey?” she asks, her voice half-yawn. 

He stands up quickly, almost tripping over his feet in the process. “I-I had a bad dream,” he says, the best excuse he can come up with. “Can I sleep in here?”

Sara doesn’t answer, just rolls over to the other side of the bed and holds the duvet up for her brother to crawl under, which he does. The pillow he lays his head down on is still warm, and smells of Sara’s hair. It’s comforting, and Michele is able to drift off to sleep fairly easily, certain that he just made some sort of mistake, and he will figure it out in the morning.

* * *

He doesn’t figure it out in the morning. Or the next. Or the next. Michele spends the next few years writing frantic messages all over his body, but not a single one ever shows on Sara’s skin.

* * *

It is summer, and Laura’s birthday, and she is having a pool party, boys and girls. Michele and Laura have never exactly gotten along, but he is Sara’s brother and comes along anyway. Someone needs to protect Sara from the slobbering school boys. They are twelve now, and Sara has grown taller than Michele in the last year. She has long tan legs and big lavender sunglasses, and their mother let her buy a skimpy turquoise bikini that Michele does _not_ approve of. He is going to punch Lorenzo Arrighi if he doesn’t stop ogling her from across the pool. 

He is laying out on one of the beach chairs, watching Sara where she stands with a group of other girls in her class. A pack of boys stands about ten feet away, and every minute or so, the girls will look over at them and explode into giggles. Mickey doesn’t like it.

He’s not really friends with anyone here; he is just here for Sara. It has been only a couple of hours and he has already gotten a sunburn that stings whenever he moves. If he had his way, he would be at the rink. He doesn’t want to think what would happen if he wasn’t here, thought- they’d played a game earlier, where a girls sat on boys’ shoulders in the pool and attempted to knock each other off. Multiple guys had come up, trying to get Sara up onto their shoulders, but Sara had just climbed up Michele’s back and hugged his head. “Let’s get ‘em, Mickey!” 

Now she is running back over to him, clump of friends following behind her like a shadow. Her sunglasses are pushed up, and her eyes are sparkling. She takes a seat on her pink towel, spread out on the chair next to Michele. “Don’t freak out, Mickey,” she says, her voice conveying a low-level current of extreme excitement that has Mickey suddenly very worried. “But look.” She shoves out her arm.

_Oh...hello! Wow. I’m sorry, is that Italian? I don’t speak it. :)_

Something heavy drops to the very bottom of Mickey’s stomach.

“What is this, Sara?”

She’s blushing. His Sara is blushing because of one stupid sentence scrawled on her arm in bad handwriting. 

“They...they dared me to write something, when they found out I never have! I didn’t expect to get an answer so quickly…”

She cradles her arm as she looks at it, and Michele is reminded of the fond way his teacher stared at her own arm when he was young, when he first learned about soulmates. “What should I write back?”

“Nothing!” he shouts, and it is probably a little too loud, because the twittering girls go silent and stare at him. He takes a breath and lowers his voice. “You’re too young to be sending messages to same strange boy, Sara. Who knows what kind of person he is?”

“He’s my _soulmate_ , Mickey,” Sara says, like he is stupid. “He’s not dangerous.”

They have a short argument, but Michele fails to hold his temper and Sara eventually storms off to the other end of the pool, girlfriends in tow. She’s so stubborn. Why can’t she just see that he only wants to protect her? 

He snatches up his towel and his water bottle and starts to go inside. Fuck this. He feels the burn on his skin, but then a sharper prickle, on his right arm. He doesn’t look at it until he gets inside.

_Yes, Italian! My name is Sara! And you?_

* * *

His name is Jussi. He lives in Finland. He is fourteen years old and likes playing piano and ice hockey.

* * *

At first, Sara talks about him all the time. She’s constantly scribbling on herself, to the point where their mother yanks a pen out of her hand one night at dinner and throws it out the window. “A time and place, my darling,” she says, sitting back in her chair and taking a sip of wine while Sara pouts.

Michele throws himself into his skating. They will be old enough to qualify for Juniors soon, and he needs to be at the top of his game. He needs to win. He needs to win for his soulmate, win for Sara, because the ice is still a place that belongs just to them.

* * *

After a while, soulmate messages are supposed to stop hurting, becoming more of a familiar, loving touch than a burn calling for attention. Over time and with frequency, they can become almost unnoticeable until looked at.

For Michele, Sara’s messages never stop stinging.

* * *

By the time they are 18, Michele and Sara have moved to Naples to train with a new coach. Since they are there on their own, they share a flat. It’s a small place, microscopic square footage, with thin walls that barely contain any sound. In the morning, when he wakes up, Michele can hear Sara singing as she makes breakfast in the tiny kitchenette. Afternoons he can hear her out on the terrazza, chatting with Laura about how things are back home. At night- and at night-

At night he hears low whispers and soft gasps. He hears buzzing and the tap-tap of her bedframe against the wall. Sometimes he strains to listen and sometimes he covers his head, trying, trying, trying to block it out, but nothing can block out the burning on his thighs. 

He kicks off his sleep pants and turns on the bedside lamp, watching the lipstick kisses make their way up his leg, up his inner thigh, wherever Sara can reach.

_“I want to kiss you like this,” he can hear her whisper. “Why can’t I be with you now?”_

You can, Michele wants to cry out, but it gets lost in mumbles as he takes himself in hand. He pulls at his cock every time he feels Sara’s burn on his skin, lost in the fantasy that all of these words are really for him. He could see her walking into his bedroom, wearing nothing but those baby blue sleep shorts and that soft white shirt, holding her arm out. 

“Is this from you?” she would ask. _I love you, Sara. I love you, Sara._ Scrawled all over her arm in Michele’s handwriting, no one else’s. She’d crawl into his bed, hovering overing him, straddling him. There would be happy tears in her eyes. “Mickey, I’ve been waiting for you.” She would let him pull down those silky shorts. Sara is perfect, she is beautiful and she is so fucking tight when she finally slides down on him fully, connecting them. Completing them.

_“I’ve wanted you to touch me for so long, I think I’ll die when we’re finally together.”_

Michele jerks up violently and come splatters all over his stomach. As it cools, he comes back to reality, the reality where he is alone in the dark and Sara is on the other side of the wall, still leaving soft, painful kisses for her soulmate.

* * *

“For the last time,” Sara says, leaning over the bathroom sink, applying the cherry red lipstick perfectly and then giving a smack of her lips before turning back to Michele. He hovers in the doorway almost as if he is considering blocking it. “Jussi is not a stranger. For God’s sakes, Mickey, I’ve known him since I was twelve years old. We love each other. He came all the way to Paris to see me skate tomorrow, so yes, we are going to dinner.”

“You’ve known him since you were twelve and this is the first time you are ever meeting face to face,” Michele counters. “He has to be hiding something.”

She pushes past him and kneels down to unzip her suitcase, tossing aside shirts and jeans and underthings until she finds the black heels hiding at the bottom. “You know, it’s supposed to be polite to not push to meet your soulmate when they’re too young,” Sara said. “It means he is a gentleman. Isn’t that the kind of guy you want for me?” 

_I don’t want anyone to have you,_ he says, in his mind alone, for the thousandth time. He watches her kick her legs up, push the fuck-me pumps onto her sweet, dainty feet and Michele thinks that he is going to crack the doorframe if he doesn’t let go. 

“I worry about you getting hurt,” he says, both a truth and a lie. He is always worrying about Sara getting hurt, she is the most precious, dear, tender thing in the world to him, but he is also worried about his own hurt that he feels slowly strangling him, the burn that grows stronger until he feels like it is going to consume him. 

Sara softens at his tone, no longer confrontational. “I’ll text you when I get there, while I’m there, while I’m on my way back.” She stands, and she comes close, and Michele can smell the perfume that she bought just for this occasion. It smells like raspberries and roses and he just wants to bury himself close to it. Instead, he closes his eyes when his sister places a hand on his cheek, tries not to fall into it when she follows it up with a soft kiss. He opens his eyes and she is right there. She is smiling. She looks so happy, and it isn’t because of him.

“I’ll be fine, Mickey,” she says, hand on the doorknob. “After all, he is my soulmate. Why would your soulmate ever hurt you?”

**Author's Note:**

> follow me at [machinewithoutfeelings](http://www.http://machinewithoutfeelings.tumblr.com/)


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